UPDATE: More sexual abuse charges filed against former York Boy Scout leader

Sixteen new charges are added, bringing the total to 30

Thomas George Seifert has been charged with multiple counts of felony child… (Virginia Peninsula Regional…)

July 16, 2014|By Peter Dujardin, pdujardin@dailypress.com

YORK — The York-Poquoson Sheriff's Office has filed 16 new sexual abuse charges against a former Boy Scout leader — with an investigator contending in a court document that massages were given to a Scout as "punishment" for failing to complete merit badges.

Thomas G. Seifert, 56, until recently the assistant scoutmaster at Troop 226, was charged with 16 new counts of taking indecent liberties with a minor in a supervisory role, according to a criminal complaint filed this week in Juvenile and Domestic Relations District Court.

Seifert — already facing 14 indecent liberties charges pertaining to two other Scouts — now has 30 charges against him, each punishable by up to five years behind bars.

Seifert, who had been a Boy Scout leader at a U.S. Air Force base in Okinawa, Japan, in the 1980s, was supposed to have been kicked out of the Boy Scouts for life in 1988 after a Scout accused Seifert of sexually abusing him six years earlier.

But Seifert began volunteering at the York troop about 10 years ago, with the Boy Scouts of America saying he was able to get back into the organization because the list of banned Scout leaders had his name spelled incorrectly as "Siefert."

The Boy Scouts use the attainment of merit badges as a primary path toward advancement through the ranks, on the way to Eagle Scout.

The accuser for the 16 new charges told deputies that "Mr. Seifert would set time limits for each merit badge," Sheriff's Investigator J.W. Doss wrote in a July 14 criminal complaint. When the teen initially failed to meet a deadline, Seifert "confronted" him in a bathroom at Seifert's home, Doss wrote.

"Mr. Seifert told him to take all his clothes off and stand naked in front of him as a punishment," Doss wrote in the complaint. "Mr. Seifert stared at him naked for one minute before allowing him to put his clothes back on."

But later, the complaint said, Seifert "punished" the Scout with massages — in a shed at Seifert's Meadowfield Road home and a shed at Edgehill Pool, where Seifert also worked as a volunteer.

The boy told investigators he was subjected to 20 massages, 17 in the shed at the residence and three at the pool. He was "fully naked" for 10 of the massages and partially covered for five, the complaint said.

Doss' complaint asserts that Seifert made or attempted to make further physical contact with the boy during several massages. The boy eventually quit the Scouts, with the massages being one of the primary reasons for his departure, the complaint said.

Using massages as punishment differs from a July 3 criminal complaint in which Seifert is accused of giving massages to another Scout as rewards. Seifert "used completing merit badges as an excuse" to give massages "at his house and at the pool," Doss wrote in a July 3 complaint.

According to court documents, Seifert's wife first reported the allegations, telling deputies "she had information that her husband has been molesting children" at their residence.

Seifert — being held at the Virginia Peninsula Regional Jail — declined to be interviewed for this story. His attorney, Jeff Rountree, did not return a phone call Wednesday.